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Tuesday, January 13, 2015

A Passive Firearm and Contraband Detection System

“In designing this new safety system, it was necessary to reject current hardware and software designs to allow the flexibility in designing a firearms and contraband detection system that will meet varying public and private school safety needs in cost and usability.” excerpt: White Paper by R. Fluck”

The "Passive Scan" Wireless Gateway

An idea that has matured to specifically meet the needs for elementary, secondary, and university school safety.

DESIGNED FOR THE NOW

A customer demonstration video showing the capabilities and operational interface of the Passive Scan Model ES3.

“This system can operate in stand-alone mode, or it can be controlled and monitored, via a desktop or laptop computer via USB or Bluetooth, or with your Android Smartphone or tablet.” excerpt: Article by R. Fluck

IMPLEMENTATION AS A DETERRENCE

“…schools should randomly draw classroom numbers and search every student in the selected classroom. This approach provides an element of surprise, which discourages students from bringing weapons to school.”excerpt: Mike Dorn, executive director for Safe Havens International

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

“It was once said that “It is better to tell the truth than tell a lie”, “It is better to know than not to know”…However, in the case of my “knowing” of the Passive Scan system and knowing that, had this cost-effective and state-of-the-art wonder of technology been deployed and operational on December 14th at a school in Newtown, Connecticut called Sandy Hook Elementary School, little souls and seven adult souls might not have been released to their creator before their time.” excerpt: Capstone by C. Alexander

A PORTAL OF SAFETY

The “Passive Scan” Gateway used at sports field egress.

THE ECONOMICS FACTOR

“The modular approach to manufacturing and the cost savings realized through component selection, allows the system to be offered to the industry at a cost well below currently available metal detection devices.” excerpt: White Paper by R. Fluck

A NEW METHODOLOGY

“I am sure many of you have done childhood experiments, using a bar magnet placed under a piece of paper, and then sprinkled iron filings on top of the paper. Remember the almost bubble like lines that appeared that were produced by the poles of the magnet. These lines also exist on earth, which can be thought of as a very large magnet. Now, consider these magnetic lines around the earth as a fog. We are tuned to this fog, and any item that is surrounded by its own magnetic field, like a firearm, will produce a hole in this fog. This is what we detect. The holes in the fog.”excerpt: presentation by R. Fluck

PUTTING CHILDREN’S SAFETY FIRST

…there is still the unresolved issue of what can be done to eliminate shootings by firearms in our public school systems to the very best of our abilities. The problem seems clear enough. These acts, as unconscionable as they may be, have been tolerated far too long by a society that would quickly assign blame to the perpetrator’s state-of-mind, or to the business that sold the firearm to the perpetrator to begin with. And while there is enough blame to go around regarding both philosophies of thought, the focus always seems to be on the problem post the event and not on a long-term resolution to the problem. We have the technology currently in place to prevent such acts and to hold those accountable who would seek to premeditatedly commit such acts before any loss of life could occur when it clearly could be prevented.” excerpt: Capstone by C. Alexander

"In 2013, Everytown began tracking gunfire in schools and at college and universities — public reports that a firearm was discharged inside a school building or on school or campus grounds — and over the next three years identified 160 qualifying incidents, including fatal and nonfatal assaults, suicides, and unintentional shootings."

TECHNOLOGICAL CONTRASTS

A comparison of “Passive Scan” with other metal detectors on the market today.

WIRED and WIRELESS INTERFACING

Android Smartphone Control Application for “Passive Scan”

Desktop Control Software Interface for “Passive Scan”

For more information about the “Passive Scan” firearm and contraband system for your schools and secure venues, please contact: rfluck@controlcapture.com

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

One thing that sets the AndroiDAQ module from other data
acquisition products on the market is its use of the industry standard FTDI
UART to USB conversion integrated circuit for USB serial communications. This
allows the designer to use one easy to use USB driver for programming with the
AndroiDAQ module in the various popular programming languages and on various
operating system platforms, which at times can be a very taunting task with
other commercially available data acquisition products. This also makes it easy
to develop your application for the AndroiDAQ module in not only Android, Java,
and LabVIEW, but for other popular programming languages like Python, which can
also be used on multiple platforms. This article is going to present to you how
to set up Python for serial communication, via the USB port, so that you can
add Python to your list of tools for controlling and reading the AndroiDAQ
module.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

The AndroiDAQ oScope for LabVIEW
is a new LabVIEW application VI that is now included in Controlled Capture
Systems’ AndroiDAQ DEMO for LabVIEW library project. oScope allows you to
acquire a user set number of analog to digital samples at user set time-based
intervals, much like a digital oscilloscope. oScope uses LabVIEW’s Waveform
graph to plot the received sample data from the AndroiDAQ module to give you a
visual representation of the signal on channel zero of the AndroiDAQ ADC.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

In
the digital world, information is shared through software using multiple digital
patterns of ones and zeros. These digital patterns can represent alphanumeric
characters, mathematical operations, memory commands, or any other representative
data that when decoded by software, corresponds to understandable information based
on an agreed upon model of the digital patterns and data manipulation methods. This
is all well and good for applications of math calculation, word processing,
database entry, and other symbol based system uses, however, one can ask: how
does one get real world physical data into a format of digital patterns that
can be used by computers to measure, display, calculate upon, and manipulate the
data?

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Like many design engineers and makers versed in open source, I wanted a development board that would allow me to eliminate the compromises in my designs due to manufacturer propriety hardware and software. I was never really happy with the number of channel offerings, firmware limitations, physical size, and costs per channel of commercially available data acquisition products currently on the market today. I was also not satisfied with other simplistic project platforms like the Ardruino and IOIO for use on projects like hexapods, quadcopters and other complex robotic systems that need parallel processes, vice linear processes. There had to be a better way and a better development board that could also be open source. So in 2013, I developed an entirely new data acquisition module and prototyping paradigm that I call AndroiDAQ.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

The AndroiDAQ module was designed as an easy to use and complete data acquisition module for multiple platforms. Not only can it be used with the Android operating system, but it can also be easily used with National Instrument’s LabVIEW, as well as JAVA, Python, and other programming languages. To demonstrate this, Controlled Capture Systems offers a complete data acquisition suite for AndroiDAQ and LabVIEW called AndroiDAQ DEMO for LabVIEW. The term DEMO is short for Dream, Engineer, Make, and Operate. The open source nature of DEMO allows users of LabVIEW to open and view the LabVIEW source wiring diagrams to understand the functions of how to control the AndroiDAQ module under USB, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth to measure the 8-channels of its analog to digital converter (ADC), or control, as inputs or outputs, the 16-channels of digital IO. The wiring diagrams also show you how to read and/or clear or set the built-in AndroiDAQ micro-SD card and AndroiDAQ’s real-time clock. This article is going to explain several of the sub-VIs (or sub-virtual instruments, which are what LabVIEW methods or functions are called) of the DEMO for LabVIEW application, so that you can apply these sub-VIs to your own custom application with the AndroiDAQ module.

This is a new paradigm in data acquisition for Android, JAVA, Python, and LabVIEW: AndroiDAQ, an eight-core parallel processing data acquisition system used for creating products for the Internet of Things.

Monday, July 7, 2014

In 1984, Joseph Ruben
directed a science fiction film called “Dreamscape”. In this movie, you are
taken to a lab where scientists and system integrators are busy developing head
gear, to aid in the monitoring and control of dreams. The first appearance of
this head gear is very crude, as it is cumbersome, bulky, and heavy, with wires
and leads sticking out everywhere, but later, as the development on the head
gear continues, it becomes a sleek, fully functional, and lightweight head set.

Monday, June 30, 2014

There is a question of what the term time-lapse means exactly, when referenced to photography and or imaging. According to the website Webopedia, the definition of time-lapse is: “In digital photography, it's the name of the process used to capture a set of images at preset intervals of time.” This seems to be a reasonable definition for either digital or analog image capture, which can go further as the preset intervals of time can be also termed as the frame rate of image capture.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Integrity. This simple noun is defined as: the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; consistency of actions, values, methods, measures and principles. Honest and trustworthy people strive to ensure that their integrity is intact. They remain accountable for their own and their business' actions. Though seemingly, in this 21st century, integrity is becoming something of an antiquity, which is very troubling to me and it should also trouble you.

Friday, June 20, 2014

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." -Alan Kay

Everyday new electronic hardware and devices are announced and made available on the market. There is a plethora of electronic devices available that not only vary in their capabilities and functions but also in their pricing and product age. Careful selection of devices must be made to avoid end-of-life parts. If perchance an inexperienced designer selects one of these parts for product development and when the part is discontinued, the product's viability and cost will be greatly affected due to the necessity of having to redesign the product. With over 25-years experience in Electronic Design I can help you in avoiding these costly mistakes.

Blog Archive

About Me

I started Controlled Capture Systems in 2002. This company provides software and hardware development and systems integration services to large and small companies. Systems Integration is a fancy name for interfacing electronic equipment and other components with electronic parts to make the system as a whole work in unison, hence my love for robotics and machine control.

I have been designing interface electronic circuits for various companies and systems since 1987, up to and including printed circuit board layout. Of course that was during the days before Computer Aided Design, so 4X tape ups of the PCB were the norm then. I now use Cadence/OrCAD for layout work which is a godsend compared to tape up work on Mylar, and also due to the micro sized pitches of today's electronics.

I started programming computers when I bought a kit from Radio Shack in 1977 and during high school on a Commodore PET. I further learned more programming techniques in 1982 when I purchased a TI-99/4A and also when I was able to hack a friends Commodore 64. From there I learned Basic, most forms of C, Perl, JAVA, HTML, css, xml, php and other web programming languages. I have many firmware languages under my belt for various micro-controllers. I currently enjoy programming with Android (my favorite system as a whole), LabVIEW, and IMAQ ( both are graphical programming and image processing languages), OpenCV -the mother of image processing languages, and a few others that won't come to mind.

In 1980, I joined the US Navy Nuclear Power Program. As a nuke, I was stationed on several US nuclear submarines in Hawaii and in Washington state. Prior to joining the Navy I had three years of training from Devry where I learned to design electronic circuits using anything from vacuum tubes to integrated circuits. This prior training allowed me to teach basic electronics to Middle Eastern sailors in San Diego, while I awaited nuke school.

After the Navy, in 1988, I helped start a company called Control Vision Inc.. There we designed several laser augmented video camera systems that could see through bright light of processes like arc welding and plasma spray. While at Control Vision I got into image processing and machine vision, using LabVIEW. Unfortunately, the owner of Control Vision retired prematurely and dissolved the local company location, so I started Controlled Capture Systems, my present company.

I have worked on many exciting projects during my career, including projects for NASA and the Department of Energy, where in 2003 we jointly developed a Concealed Weapons and Contraband Detection walk-through system, which produced one of the several US Patents that I hold on such systems.

I especially enjoy helping people with taking their ideas and making them a reality. I have made many prototype designs for companies throughout the years and have helped start up companies take their initial designs into full production systems. Gearing up for manufacturing is another aspect of my job that I enjoy, as it is an exciting time for any start up company.

I recently completed the design of a development module that I call AndroiDAQ. This module gives data acquisition capabilities to Android tablets and phones. The module has over 16-channels, all of which can be configured as either an input or output, which can provide a high/low digital levels, or they be configured as frequency measuring channels or frequency outputting channels. The module also has a separate 8-channel ADC that can be used for voltage measurements.

I designed the AndroiDAQ module as I wasn't happy with the number of channel offerings, limitations, size, and costs per channel of other commercially available data acquisition products currently on the market. I was also not satisfied with other simplistic project platforms like the Ardruino, for use on projects like hexapods, quadcopters and other complex robotic systems that need parallel processes, vice linear processes.